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Thursday, January 6, 2011

How do you know?

My initial title was “How do you know when it’s time to have a (or another) baby?”But the answer to that is rather obvious- you haven’t been able to see your toes for 5 months, your face has swollen into a perfect sphere, and every 2-3 minutes you’re screaming at pitches only dogs can hear in a desperate attempt to alleviate some of the pain coming from this ‘beautiful’ creature inside your belly.My real question is “How do you know when it’s time to start trying for a/another baby?”

My husband and I had a plan that we’d have our first baby when we were 30.Then suddenly, I get smacked in the head with Baby Fever at 26 and all I can do (think, feel, want, etc) is Baby.Even pregnant women made me gushy.How do you explain this to a guy?

Me: Well yes, honey, I know that was our plan, but you see, now I really want one.

Him: What made you change your mind?

Me: Uhhhhh…

As soon as the pregnancy test was positive, my husband was excited and upon seeing our baby 9 months later, I know he’d never look back.But, as Baby starts to get older, I am noticing signs of an all too familiar illness.The plan all along was to have our kids 2-2.5 years apart, but Baby isn’t even 1 yet and Baby Fever is settling in…hard.It is unfair (not to mention, unproductive) for me to call the shots alone but then how do I make these feelings disappear for another 6 months?I try thinking about all of the inconveniences of pregnancy, but even morning sickness sounds delightful right now.Does this happen to everyone or am I just weak?How did you know it was time?Did your husband agree?

2 comments:

I want to try to say this without coming across as a total downer (every woman is different, etc etc), but one thing to keep in mind is how long the whole process is. We got pregnant with our daughter after only trying for a couple of months, but even with those couple of months, the whole process takes about a year if everything goes well.Our plan was to start trying for our second a couple of months before our daughter turned 2, thinking we would have another child before she turned 3. Since we had such an easy time the first time, it never even occurred to me that things wouldn't go the way we "planned". Now we're a month away from when we thought we'd have our second, and I'm not even pregnant.Obviously there are a lot of factors for you and your husband to discuss and I'm not trying to imply that what happened to us will happen to you, I guess all I'm trying to say is something along the lines of "the best laid plans..." I had the urge to start sooner, but wanted to stick to the plan. Now I'm stuck somewhere between "everything happens for a reason" and "damn, I wish we had started sooner..."

I don't think you're a downer!! I want full honesty from other mamas, we're all in this together. I got pregnant pretty much immediately with my first so it was good to hear from you that it's not guaranteed to be that way the next time around. I need to keep that in mind whenever we do start trying for my own mental stability. I firmly believe everything happens for a reason and when you look back, you can often see just what the reason was...but that doesn't make it any easier while you're going through it.